Ernesto Quiñonez - San Juan Noir

The handle was still there.

In those days, police work was sloppy and not as thorough as it would become. I could still see dried blood and the impression the body had made in the ground. I pulled the handle out and looked around on all fours to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

My diligence was rewarded. About twenty minutes later, I found the steel blade from my father’s machete. There were still streaks of dried blood on it. I took both pieces with me and went home, stashed them behind the latrine.

My father’s drinking increased and his foulness and nastiness with it.

I heard the sound of flesh smacking flesh late one night, bestial groans from my father’s throat. I knew damn well what was going on. My mother was being beaten and raped by the man she had vowed to honor and obey until death undid them apart.

She could no longer hide the bruises on her arms, legs, and face by combing her hair or by wearing long-sleeved blouses. I took all of this, just like my mother did, with silence. And after school every day — behind the latrine — I mended my father’s machete.

And I planned.

The beatings my mother got nightly began to take their toll. She became a frightened and defeated creature. There was no shadow left of the woman I had loved so much. Her tears were my tears. Her pain was my pain. We became shells, spiritless shells.

As the coquís sang their sweet lullabies and the small town slumbered in a peaceful sleep one night, I slipped away from the house and went straight to the latrine. I’d planned for days and weeks. I waited for the bastard to come around the bend, on the familiar road where trucks drove by in the mornings and were chased by little boys.

I saw his silhouette under a weak moon, a black smear staggering along the road. I waited, hunched behind bushes, where I found some sugarcane forgotten by the boys.

I heard his boots dragging on the road, sending small pebbles skidding into the bushes. One of them tumbled, jumped into the air, and hit the raised machete blade.

I could smell the sweat and alcohol seeping out of his pores, even from there. I could smell his breath that came in and out in halting hiccups and loud, disgusting burps.

His bloodshot eyes popped out from their sockets when the sharp blade — his precious blade — slashed him along his neck, slicing his throat open. Blood shot out like a busted water pipe, and he pressed his fingers to the wound.

He staggered backward, then sideways, and the momentum knocked him forward. I swung the machete again, slicing half his face off. His knees buckled and he landed hard, still holding onto his throat and making gurgling sounds — for with severed vocal cords there were no screams of death. I buried the blade into his black heart with one final thrust and ran like a demon.

The morning sun rose above the mountains and the wind brought the aromas of a new day with it. Grandpa’s rooster flapped his tired, old wings and stretched his scrawny neck — he crowed. I could hear soft snoring coming from my mother’s room.

The peaceful sleep she had been denied for too long.

I smiled. She will sleep better from this day forward, I told myself.

Sirens approached from the distance, and I could hear the chattering of a nervous crowd gathering at the bend in the road. I pretended I was still sleeping when the first knocks came urgently on the door.

Originally written in English

El Condado

I’d been told that the security office at the Majestic was a labyrinth, like the ones in the movies. So when they took me there — handcuffed, held by the arm, disgraced — I lost myself in that sea of monitors and Internet servers, until I was left sitting in that little room. That’s when I woke up to the reality of the situation: they were going to kick me out of the Majestic, after seventeen years working my ass off for this fucking hotel. The shift manager showed up fifteen minutes later, with his characteristic mafioso air, face serene and eyes unhinged. He entered the room and sat down facing me. A few seconds went by and he didn’t say anything. I was quiet too. Like a gangster, he removed a cigarette from his pack and offered me one. I was scared shitless, so I started to blubber excuses: “My bad, man, she tricked me, I didn’t see it coming.” I was always careful, stuff like that never happened to me. He just wanted me to tell him everything before that dumb-ass Hermann showed up with a police officer. Because part of that whole theater would be meeting with the director of Security and an agent from the CIC — the night manager always wanted to be told everything, no matter what it was. If you stepped up and told the truth, he’d also step up and support the staff. If you didn’t support the staff, the hotel was screwed. I won’t lie, I didn’t trust my boss, man. Because all of that sounds nice, camaraderie among men, that bullshit about not sticking your nose in anyone else’s business — until someone sticks a knife in your back.

“Relax, Papi. Tell me everything. And then repeat the story in front of Hermann and the agent. I’ll be with you the whole time. I got your back. Don’t worry,” he said.

Relax?... How do you get to Jayuya? Take the back road — that’s what my grandpa always said. You get it? I had to make sure that the night manager would have my back, you know. It wasn’t the first time that Security had interrogated me, nor was it the first time that a police detective had questioned me during an investigation. Being interviewed in the manager’s office and being handcuffed and interrogated in a bunker are not the same thing. For the first time, I was the subject in question, and I had to know if this guy was going to have my back. It really fucked with me not knowing for certain that no matter what I said and what happened, the next day I’d head to the bellhop room, punch in, and go to work. That’s how I earn a living, and I couldn’t let any manager get in the way of that. So I had no choice but to tell him.

Her name was Candy, or that’s what she said, you know, and she’d been staying in the Ocean Suites for three days. A blonde with a tight body, one of those rare girls from somewhere in the Southwest US: tall, blond, green eyes. Not more than twenty-five. Always in tropical clothes, but elegant, with a small tattoo of an infinity symbol on her right wrist and an Egyptian cross on her left. A sea of freckles sprinkled across her tits. From the time she stepped through the arch of the main entrance, she was throwing cash around left and right. Thirty bucks for Antonio to go get her luggage, three hundred as an appetizer for the girl at reception to give her an exclusive suite facing the sea. A hundred for Ortiz to bring up her luggage. Come on, the girl, being Southern, was a gravy train. When they dropped off her luggage, she just sat down on the balcony chair and called down to order a bottle of Cristal and some strawberries dipped in chocolate. Fifty bucks for room service, easy.

To top it off, she was nice. She smiled wide, her cheeks pocked with dimples. She strolled all around the terra-cotta marble of the lobby. She inspected the details in the wood, the lights, the assortment of orchids with a captivated expression, like some kind of hippie Indiana Jones — you know the way some women are, the way they act kind of dumb, but then all of a sudden they pull out the whip or put a bullet in you, eyeing you up and down like an aborigine. She talked to whomever she wanted whenever she wanted, guest or employee, it didn’t matter. She asked about everything, from what your job was to how many kids you had, putting on an interested face. It was impossible to tell if she was really paying attention or if she was possessed by the coldest cynicism on the planet.